There's nothing like a bit of real-life drama to make a play go with a bang - or at least that seems to be the case with Declan Hughes's new play, Twenty Grand. At the first preview performance this week, one of the actors, Michael McElhatton, was stabbed during a complicated and bloody scene - like a true Olivier, he finished the performance before being taken to hospital.
He was back on stage again at the opening on Wednesday night, good-humouredly fielding lots of rather bloodthirsty inquiries about his health. While McElhatton was unable to appear, playwright Hughes played the role of understudy - which more than one member of the audience seemed to consider poetic justice.
It meant Hughes had rather a lot on his plate - after this success, he is going straight to work on a new screenplay. Commissioned by Rob Roy producer, Peter Broughan and the BBC, it will tell the story of Brian McKinnon, the Glaswegian who pretended to be 17 in order to re-sit his A-levels in 1995.
It was the first time many of the audience had seen the re-vamped - and much improved - Peacock foyer and this, combined with the good spirits provoked by the play, meant the after-show drinks lingered on and on. Director Ben Barnes and playwright Bernard Farrell are seeing plenty of the Abbey these days as Ben is at work on Bernard's new play, Kevin's Bed.
Peter McDonald, the star of I Went Down, was chatting to Buena Vista's Trish Long, and admitted they were all delighted with their American distributor: "It was the final hurdle for the film." Kathy Strachan, who designed the rather swish Twenty Grand set and is also a veteran of I Went Down (for which she did the costume design), was taking it easy as she was on an early flight to London the next day.
Helen Shaw, the recently appointed director of radio at RTE, also came along for the show; she will be the first speaker in the 1998 Irish Permanent Women In Business series, which starts in the Shelbourne on Monday.
Other folk who came to the premiere included actor Gina Moxley who can currently be seen in The Butcher Boy; playwright Jim Nolan whose play The Salvage Shop was such a hit at the Red Kettle in Waterford; directors Mary Elizabeth Burke Kennedy and Michael West; RTE's Mike Murphy and, of course, the show's director, Conall Morrison who was overseeing the proceedings.